BONNE A. NARDI A Small Matter of Programming. MIT Press, 1993

In 1979, Bonnie Nardi tells us, she spent several months in Papua New Guinea and came back with an account of how its villagers communicated with slit-gongs. This book is her account of what she has learned in several years of studying the communications of another exotic folk: users of application software packages. The burden of Nardi's account concerns the amazing ability of these people to master formal systems and notations, and the ways in which they co-operate with each other in their spreadsheeting and computer assisted design. These topics are-or ought to be-of vital interest to the designers of software packages. However, plenty of advice on usability has already been proffered to the designer (and, judging by her extensive list of references, read by Nardi). Is there any reason why we should welcome yet one more (blessedly slim) volume? There is every reason. Nardi is a natural historian of humanity, with acute powers of observation and analysis, and-which is even rarer-the ability to marshal evid- ence and conduct argument. In her discussions of the mundane human conversation as a model of the human/computer interface, and of a variety of interaction techniques, she wields the blade of reason so courteously and delicately that even those whose ideas have been cut to size, or given an elegant coup de grace, could scarcely complain at the treatment. But between these discussions comes Nardi's major achievement: a beauti- fully sustained and forceful argument that ordinary human beings can master formal systems, and even special notations. Now recall all those other approaches to usability, including not a few among the writings of the Artificial Intelligentsia. tht start from a presupposi- tion (rarely evidence or argument) to the contrary. We are offered here a collection of well founded and immediately applicable advice by a skilled advocate of the user. While most of that usability literature may safely be left on the shelf, the package designer that does not now read Nardi will be without excuse.

A. LARNER

De Montfort University

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